Wednesday, 31 December 2008

Everything in Second Life is made. Nothing is natural as in random and provided. Everything is constructed. Therefore Second Life can be viewed as a kind of dream. As a dream we can read it using the methods developed by Freud in psychoanalysis.

We can view every place in Second Life as the manifest content of a kind of dream space. Behind this manifest content are a number of latent contents. The content of the designers who made the space and the combined collective content of the people who participate in the space.

What I think makes a place effective in Second Life is the presence of what Jung called the Archetypes. I would call them patterns of dreaming that are understood by people even before language. There are some patterns that exist across cultures.

In a global virtual event like Second Life we see the dreams of the world taking shape on a computer Grid. We can learn to read the meanings that humans in today's global world assign to space and interaction. We can see what people desire, what they lack, how they hurt.

But we must always remember we are seeing the rich in Second Life. Much of the world is not happening in Second Life. When was the last time you meet someone from Africa or even China in Second Life? Come to think of it I have never meet anyone from India. The Third World reality is censored in Second Life.

Sex remains the most popular thing in Second Life. This is something Freud would understand. Jung rejected Freuds assertion that the human is solely motivated by Sexual desires. Looking at Second Life I would say that Freud was probably right. Sex is king on this planet.

Midsomer's Isle is my favorite place in Second Life. Its has a great deal of meanings for me. I went there a great deal when I was on the road working and feeling depressed.

There is a great deal of personal energy that goes in to constructing an avatar. Avatars are spaces in online network community. I have worked a great deal in making Rober1236 Jua an vital character in his virtual reality. It is a part of my life as an adult trying to make my way through a fucked up world.

I never think of Rober1236 Jua as me. It is always "he". The things he does are observed by me BUT NOT DONE by me. I am not sure how other people feel. Still sometimes what happens to Rober1236 Jua has an intense impact on me. And sometimes I come through him. When I am talking with friends made in Second Life I feel my avatar becomes a channel. I am not him but I am using him to speak.

I can't really place where my adventures in Second Life fit in to my life's story. I guess it will have to do with how our culture places virtual reality events. If our culture comes to see them as significant my early life in Second Life might be the most powerful event of my 40s. Or if our culture dismisses Second Life as a "game" my acts in Second Life may mean nothing to me. It is still an open question how much Second Life can mean.

With a new machine and a new 9800 GT graphics card and a Duel Cord Intel chip. Second Life has managed to create a world that looks better the more expensive computer you have. Linden Labs has managed to make a world that is more beautiful for the rich.

Capitalist dreams; a world that you can pay to look better. A sun set in Second Life can cost something, you can pay more to make it more beautiful.

Tuesday, 30 December 2008

Sometimes you just fly off in Second Life. In this case I found myself just flying away. I could still IM people but I kept flying into a strange place.

In SL you can simply take or be taken "off" at any moment. Its a social world in which players can just vanish either at will or because of the nature of the game itself. This is key to my concept of the outsourced suture. We can leave the identities we form in Virtual Reality at any time. We can also be taken out of communities or places at any moment. Our identity is very lose, and can be closed or reformed at any moment.

Monday, 29 December 2008

Clubbing, as in this club in the sky is a popular social activity in Second Life. Essentially it ads a more interactive dimension to Internet radio, allowing people to pilot avatars to dance in clubs. Besides dancing one can talk or flirt with others from around the world.

"In celebration and in honor of World War 2 Veterans during Memorial Day Weekend here in the United States, I rezzed several of my WW2 Aircraft at 2 of my Caledon parcels. Here's a photograph of me in front of my B-17 from master aircraft builder Bancos Milestone.... "

Friday, 26 December 2008

I found this amazing article on the virtual . I found this via a widget I developed withyahoo pipes. I have some pipes linked to google and yahoo searching for stories with terms "virtual" or "Second Life." This kind of technology is very useful. RSS not HTML is the media source of the future in my opinion. Give me your information in nice XML and I will look at it in a widget that reads RSS thank you very much. If I am impressed by what I see I might go to your page and read it. If I really like it I will post a link on my blog with an outrageous photo that has a good change of getting attention. My page is then consumed by someone else via RSS in a mashup. They like the photo and click on the link to the article. Google crawls this page and finds a link to the article with words "amazing" and "virtual" and the article moves up in Google search order. Some kid uses yahoo pipes to build a massive mashup of all SL and lets anyone rip it. Soon all players of Second Life are fully informed of very thing at every moment. The future is here.

Freud would love Second Life. It is a place where a lot of work has gone in driven almost entirely by the desire to enact pornography.

The word "cyber" in Second Life is often taken to mean one thing: cybersex. Cyber sex is then 2 or more people click on these balls that animate their avatar. They can then text or VOIP to each other as they are doing in. They can also use other Internet devices to exchange information.

Soon there will be devices connected to the computer to stimulate the user in cybersex play. At that point the line between fantasy and sexuality will be very blurred.